Life is strange. so is blogging. I started this post a week ago, and put it on the back burner. Yes that is the original title. I've done that occasionally. Some have ended up revised, finished, posted; others not. And then this evening, I poured a glass of Heitz 2000 Cabernet Sauvignon...(mmmm)...and clicked on Google Reader. For a bit of a catch-up. Hadn't posted today, it being a busy task-filled day. Had something in mind called France Hands. After seeing
Our Juicy Life's post on happiness and reading her interview ... I had to wash my hands of my hands idea, take a deep breath and return to the subject of my inner happy. sometimes you just have to listen to the universe.
The other stumbling block is that my blog is intended to be all about turning one success into another. Corporate success, reinvention success, super woman extraordinaire; see kids ... you can do it! Admitting to a missing happy gene just doesn't seem to fit the formula. So readers beware. Kim's coloring outside the lines with this one.
ahem. (don't worry. that was an ahem. not a self-CPR cough attempting to intervene on a massive cardiac episode).
So. where was I? ah, yes. Many words have been used to describe me throughout my life. For every good reason, happy isn't one of them. Maybe as a verb. "Kim is happy with the project ... report card ... coq au vin". But as an adjective describing my persona ... my core being ... nahh, not so much. Now that doesn't mean I am morose.
I think the number of times I could count myself happy in the truest of senses would be achievable on my left hand. Now I'm not talking the above kind of happy. The I watched Chris Rock and happily laughed my ASS off. or the finally got a great haircut happy. the grooved out contentedly listening to any number of soul satisfying tracks by Billie Holiday or Django Reinhardt or John Coltrane or James Morrison or Al Green or Agustin Lara or countless others on my iPod. or had lip numbing, brain freezing, free flowing, mind blowing monkey *love*. (sorry kids, hide your eyes). All of those are a different kind of happy entirely.
I'm talking about the kind of happy that is giving birth to the 2 most beautiful babies on the planet. bar none. ask anyone. I honestly don't know how I pulled that one off and if I were to pray ever in life, it would be that somehow I didn't fuck that one up. (there's 2 of my limited digit list). Or the laying on the wooden bedroom floor of the house I had dreamed for and longed for and cried for and saved for and fought for until I was 37 years old and somehow fooled them all into letting me have. never mind I couldn't afford a refrigerator or curtains or much of anything else. We just played camping for a couple of months, putting a Coleman cooler in the nook where the refrigerator belonged. and then rented one. (that's 3. digits, that is). And maybe, just maybe, when the final papers arrived for my house in Brantome with a yellow sticky advising me that finally it was done. the kind of happy where when someone asks, "Are you happy?", you can wholeheartedly affirm without skipping a beat.
But even the above were targeted moments of happiness. To be honest, I really can't provide a definition of what it means to be happy. I've been very defensive about happiness. My daughter, in one of those classic mother/daughter rows once used my lack of happiness as proof of my motherly shortcomings. As much as I tried then and other times to deny it, ultimately I must admit she is correct.
There are a number of contributing factors. First off, I'm a good part Irish. yeah I know, leprechauns and rainbows. But most of the Irish I know only get happy-go-lucky after a toss or 2. We tend to be a bit on the dark side. Something to do with being stuck on the island with all of that rain, I suppose. My other part is mostly French with a dash of Austrian. None of these ancestral beginnings are exactly joyous in nature.
Another factor, that will perhaps provide fodder for future blogging, is the entirely dismal first 21 years of my existence. I have to say friends, that my first 40 years were just unbelievably hard work. In every sense of the word. Forgive me for not tap dancing my way through it all. (see what I mean, lack of happy makes one sound defensive).
Lastly. And most importantly of all. I'm really not sure I buy into the whole Happy thing. Now I hesitate in writing that because it might put off my audience. potential future friends. possible partners. people I might need in the future to provide me with employment options. I'm taking a risk with this one. Some certain number of you are likely to think less of me.
Well then. I read OJL's post with care and interest. I mean, how much more eerily coincidental? Was some secret force calling out to me. "look over here Mancha. There really IS an inner happy". When I dissect the 5 principals presented in OJLs post, there are certainly aspects I agree with. in theory. and in reality. and I think much of it will work for a lot of people. I probably could benefit from a little focus on numbers 4 and 5.
Many of my "yes's" to happy questions are in response to big ass, knock down, drag outs that are interspersed with shouts of "great, now are you FUCKING HAPPY?????!!!!" or "Are you happy NOW???". or how about the classic "NOTHING I DO WILL MAKE YOU HAPPY". whatever.
But let me say this. I don't think that LACK of the happy gene equals negativity. moroseness. Not at all. I believe, and many who know me I believe would agree that I'm a glass half full kind of person. A "let's get 'er done" gal. An afficionado of the "how can we" versus "why we can't" approach. That doesn't mean I'm a happy camper. I'm just not an affirmation and positivity kind of gal. Doesn't mean I can't appreciate those who are.
But I am not up for changing my core. My inner cloudiness. I write from my gut. I believe all writers do. We need angst. We need cynicism and sarcasm and pain and tragedy and dark clouds and tears. The well of tears is where all writing springs eternal. Except for self- help and new age tomes. Okay the well of tears and lots of booze. These are the life water of meaningful writing.
Take a look at Anne Lamott. I turned cartwheels upon reading my first Anne Lamott book. Hard Laughter. Rosie. Crooked Little Heart. that's some real shit, people. I crawled in the bottle with her. Fucking A, when she went dry her author's spirit died on the vine with her. Sorry Ms. Lamott groupies. It is true. Save for her Writing Instructions book; she went all dry and happy and self-helpy. Her story telling DNA done disappeart. If I want spiritual instruction, I'll fucking go to church thank you very much. (when hell freezes over).
The world's greatest Irish authors wrote from the scabby depths of despair. Yeats wasn't waxing poetic about the power of positive thinking. James Joyce wasn't gliding on happy to produce his work. I don't think Beckett's "More Pricks than Kicks" was extolling the virtues of smiling.
Don't get me wrong.
My soul needs to be around happy people. I feed on it. it is life affirming and like a trip to the beach in June. Ahhhh. basking in other's happiness. I find the fact that other people can so easily be happy a resolutely optimistic occurrence. Just as I view those who get married. I mean how much more fucking optimistic can someone be than to walk down the aisle, proclaim their love and troth their asses for eternity? Thank you OJL for reminding me just how important the confidently happy people of the world are to all of us.
There are times I have envied happy people. That upon self-reflection I am convinced there IS something wrong with me. Will I ever be happy with a capital "H"? or will I at least be able to describe a definition of what is happy? Because frankly, even after this verbal dump, I just do not have a clue. In pondering this matter, In reflecting upon OJLs recommendations, In reviewing my history ... tears flow.
but just as one needs sunscreen, I have my own version of happyscreen. I have far too many suitcases in my baggage collection to jump on the happy train.
I worked at a corporate enterprise once upon a time that adopted one of those catchy marketing phrases for advertising campains. something along the lines of "At Blankety blank blank, we don't want you just to survive, we help you succeed."
I'll take survival. thank you very much. that and a helping of looking forward, not back, today.
